petal

The definition of a petal is the brightly colored outside part of a plant.

An example of a petal is one of the red parts on a rose bud.

petal

any of the component parts, or leaves, of a corolla

Origin of petal

Modern Latin petalum ; from ML(Ec), a thin metal plate ; from Classical Greek petalon, leaf ; from petalos, outspread ; from Indo-European base an unverified form pet-, to spread out from source fathom

Sentence Examples

There were hundreds, maybe thousands, of cheerfully clothed giants and models lining a petal-strewn pathway.

Axillary or terminal spikes; they have four stamens, which bear at the back four small herbaceous petal-like structures, and four free carpels, which ripen to form four small green fleshy fruits, each containing one seed within a hard inner coat;.

Metamorphosis.It has already been pointed out that each kind of member of the body may present a variety of forms. For example, a stem may be a tree-trunk, or a twining stem, or a tendril, or a thorn, or a creeping rhizome, or a tuber; a leaf may be a green foliage-leaf, or a scale protecting a bud, or a tendril, or a pitcher, or a floral leaf, either sepal, petal, stamen or carpel (sporophyll); a root may be a fibrous root, or a swollen tap-root like that of the beet or the turnip. All these various forms are organs discharging some special function, and are examples of what Wolff called modification, and Goethe metamorphosis.

The phylogeny of the various floral leaves, for instance, was generally traced as follows: foliage-leaf, bract, sepal, petal, stamen and carpel (sporophylls)in accordance with what Goethe termed ascending metamorphosis.